My father bought a lamb for us this spring. Dh, being from the Middle East was very happy with this gift. The rack of lamb was not cut properly by the butcher. I think it's a factor of Americans not eating much lamb and the packaging plant butcher just didn't now how to butcher this animal properly.

The rack has the chine bone (spine) still attached. It's impossible to cut through it with regular knives. I am tempted to just grill or roast the rack as usual, but I really think we're going to end up with a mess. There is no way to divide up the chops among the diners because you can't cut through the chine bone. I tried trimming off the chine bone and I was not doing a good job, so I abandoned that idea.

you will need a saw unless you are very forceful and accurate with a cleaver. You can remove the meat in one piece with a boning knife either before cooking or after...depends on how you want to do it. Then cut slices for serving.

And people wonder why I use cleavers for all my kitchen work. The more agile you are with a particular knife, the easier any job gets with it, including whacking chine bones off a rack of lamb that wasn't properly trimmed.

Well, I absolutely could not get the chine bone off. I ended up kind of butterflying the chops right down the middle horizontally to get them cooked through. It really ended up not being very pretty, but it was delicious, so I guess that counts for something.

I'm telling you, they should have a challenge on Top Chef or something for cooking a rack with that darned bone still on to see how they manage. I'm sure they could do better than what I did!!

Thanks for the ideas!

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Life is too short to eat processed, artificially-colored, chemically-preserved, genetically-modified food. Or maybe that IS why life's too short.

That is the purpose of the original band saw - to cut meat. I have one in my basement and so do a lot of people. (I do use mine for wood, but I wouldn't hesistate to use it for meat.) But a better alternative might be to visit another butcher, and for the cost of buying a package of chops or a rib eye steak, you could probably get him to clean up your lamb for you, particularly if you tell him your story about the other butcher and promise him that you'll come to him for your future meat purchases.